How I’m Overcoming Burnout and Learning to Be More Fruitful

You could hold an acorn between your fingers and barely think twice about it.

But it can grow into an oak tree that reaches 60-100 feet tall and can live for hundreds of years. It multiplies to over 1,000 times its original size.

When you see an alfalfa plant, it seems only 1-3 feet tall, but its root system can extend 15–20 feet deep. The part that sustains the plant is deeper than what you can see on the surface

A dandelion seed that can germinate in almost any condition. They can grow in cracks in sidewalks, along the edge of a driveway, in dry, compacted soil where most plants wouldn’t last.
A single dandelion plant can produce 15,000+ seeds in a year, and each of those seeds can travel up to 5 miles on the wind. One small plant can multiply and spread far beyond where it was planted with little effort.

At the end of my therapy session this week, my therapist said,

“If we can shift the way you’re operating to take on less work that creates more impact, you’ll be much more fruitful.” 

The word “fruitful” pricked my soul.

I’ve been sitting in her chair 2-3 times per month in the last 3 months. 

This season of my life has been one of my hardest.

I’ve never been to therapy before consistently, but it was one of the first forms of support I reached out for in this season that has felt a little chaotic and tumultuous for my soul.

I’m learning how to live life with 4 beautiful kids who have so much divine variety in who they are, what they need to thrive, and what they like and don’t like.  

I have a soul that needs to create. Usually that looks like writing content for myself and offering my help and support to female business owners, or more recently writing sales content for others with the Done For You Launch. 

I have a body that’s feeling the wear and tear of growing and delivering 4 beautiful tiny humans. (And that also needs a lot of Vitamin D which it doesn’t usually get in the winter months in Utah.) 

And thankfully, I have a husband who is an amazing listener. There’s no default parent in our house. We’re ping ponging the “default” role back and forth to each other all day long.


In this particular therapy session, I was sharing with my therapist my struggle to be present with my kids.

It’s something I’ve struggled with as long as I’ve been a mom.

I have a VERY active, energized, invigorated brain that LOVES to solve problems

(And in the past few months, it’s felt like there’s A LOT of problems to solve.)

I was describing to my therapist how I can be feeding my baby or making cookies with Drew.

And my phone is put away. I want to be present. 

But my brain is still chewing on a problem it wants to solve.

“I need to put up an IG post today.”

“I need to get the washing machine or dishwasher started.”

“I need to order shorts for Grant and Norah because we’re going to Arizona for Spring Break and they only have winter clothes”

Insert ANY random problem.

She introduced me to CBT therapy.

(She didn’t say it like that, but I’m a self help nerd so I went and researched this more after our session)

Basically CBT goes like this.

You have a core belief about yourself or about the world.

From that core belief results your thoughts, emotions and behaviors.

Your behaviors are reactions to your thoughts and feelings.

So basically what’s happening is n those moments when nothing’s actually wrong, my brain still has some kind of core belief that’s running that’s resulting in anxious thoughts and emotions even in moments when I want to be still.

So we dug into what that core belief could be for me. 

There’s a few of them at play, but the biggest one was easy to find because I fight with this belief a lot,

“In order to be successful, I have to work really. Really. REALLY. Hard.”

That I have to earn success with effort.

I’m familiar with this belief. I discovered it a few years ago. We’re good friends.

But I didn’t realize it’s been showing up again,

and recently, not just in my business,

but in my role as a mom too.

And it’s been showing up as behaviors like

Staying up really late cleaning my house. 

Running around cleaning up messes when all I want to do is watch Toy Story on the couch with Drew while Freddie naps. 

Under pricing. Over delivering.

And that belief has been reinforced because:

• You can measure productivity. You can point to the clean counter, what I posted, or the empty laundry baskets. There’s something to show at the end of the day.
  
  
• Rest doesn’t give you the same visible proof. It can look like nothing happened, even when something important did.
  
  
• And doing more can start to feel like care. Starting another load of laundry before sitting down. Picking things up after everyone goes to bed because you want the house to feel calm in the morning.
  
  

Which leads to 

• Guilt when I rest or take a break or slow down
  
  
• A pull to fill every open space with more “efforting”
  
  
• Always feeling like I should be doing more
  
  

Which has created a big ol’ burnout cycle for me.

And this is not my first one.

If you look back over the last 8 years of running a business in my childbearing years, there are clear, visible cycles in my business.

(One of them has to do with when I sold my product business, but I’ll go into that another time.)

So now, my work is to slowly rewrite my belief.


Things I’m doing this week to reteach my brain a different way of doing things:

Swapping cleaning the kitchen after the kids are in bed for a bubble bath and listening to the rain falling outside

Looking for quiet contradictions (A perfect fit client who came to me that I didn’t have to “have to go find,” a week when I didn’t post and still signed a client)

Setting stronger boundaries with my prices, deliverables, and timelines

Repeating new mantras throughout the day like:

• “More pressure doesn’t mean more progress.”
  
  
• “Not everything I grow needs more effort. Some of it just needs time.”
  
  
• “What I planted is working, even if I can’t see it yet.”
  
  
• “Growth is happening in places I can’t measure.”
  
  
• “I can harvest from what I already planted months ago, not from doing more today.”

I’m learning a whole new way to be fruitful.

Putting my trust in God who’s an expert at turning small and simple things into great things (like oak trees that grow from acorns the size of a bottle cap).

Defining “productivity” as nuzzling my baby’s cheeks while he falls asleep in my arms (because my bond with my baby is like the roots of a plant that go 20x deeper than you can visibly see.)

Where I trust my impact to be able to move and multiply beyond what I can do through “efforting” (like a dandelion that travels in a breeze of the wind and requires very little input to grow) 

Sending you all of my best healing high perfectionist vibes.